Yep, we’re at it again. The Knicks Fanatics are on the move. In our constant search for the perfect resting spot for our brand of “wacky” communal blogging, the Knicks Fantics family, that group of rabid nomads, has moved around the blogosphere yet again. This time we join forces, by invitation and acclamation, with the wonderful team at Bloguin.com, one of the fastest growing sports networks in the blogosphere.

Why move since we were growing in quality and audience so rapidly? Quite frankly, this is the next stage in our blogoversal evolution and we picked Bloguin because they picked us. In the process of discussing their plans for the future, we concluded they were doing a great job in collaboration with indie blogs and that the Fanatics community would benefit greatly by joining this growing network of independent blogs. It all started with a nice message, left on our old “About” page, from Dave Kelsey, one of the founders of Bloguin. After I confirmed that Dave wasn’t a spammer rodent, I entered into what turned out to be great discussions with the Bloguin founders which included Dave, blogger and former Yardbarker exec, Ben Koo, and medical-doctor-to-be, Derek Hanson. They offered three things which I decided not to refuse: 1) An opportunity to grow our audience and resources for better coverage of the Knicks and NBA; 2) absolute and total control of our blog content and 3) a little chump change from the ads sharing our blog space. You will see that the result of those collaborations is a space we can continue to be proud to call the “Mansion.”

Bloguin.com started about a year ago. In fact their anniversary is October 28, 2009. The concept behind the venture was to provide assistance and support to sports and entertainment bloggers to enhance their resources, aesthetics and financial viability while offering greater distribution to advertisers. On their one year anniversary the Bloguin community will be about 100 blogs strong including 21 professional basketball blogs. We’re excited about working with and checking out some of the other professional basketball blogs in the neighborhood — several of them, such as faves Bust A Bucket, Barkley’s Mouth and Beyond the Beat are already on our blog roll.

I hope you like the new digs. I do, and special credit must go to Stephen Slesinski and Derek Hanson. Stephen is basically the resident art director who, based upon my specs, designed the new, original logo and banner for Knicks Fanatics. He is the one who brings the consistent professional look to the blog themes and his work is the bomb, IMHO. Check out a couple of my favorites — Pensblog and Barkley’s Mouth, mentioned above. Derek is simply THE guy who took my specs and designed a cool site theme. And for him, like me, this is his side gig. Thanks guys.

Gents (and I hope we finally get some lady Fanatics to stick around), when you get a chance, please register with Bloguin.com. You will see that the comment section, which returns us to the simple linear numbered comments, as opposed to comments three levels deep, allows for Avatars/Gravatars. I’m not a fan of the default Gravatar so I am willing to create simple Gravatars for all of the “Old Heads” and some newbies who have earned their stripes ( a vague concept regarding whether a commenter has the chops and resilience to hang with this discerning crowd). Just give me a shout out and we can make your graphic representation happen — for free.

Of course, feel free to roam around and make yourself comfortable. Find a chair, hop a squat and get comfortable. You’ll see we are a one-stop shop and a hub for the Knicks blogosphere. I will write a post describing how to maximize your use of the bells and whistles on this site later, but suffice it to say that you maximize the use of this new home by being part of the community. You will find that not only do we serve a mean dark jo in the morning we also provide news, music, videos, scores and other goodies to keep you engaged and informed about our favorite team. Look around, enjoy, comment and engage. This is how we scroll, Fanatics@Bloguin style.